[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The population of France is almost (or, but for immigra-tion, quite) stationary, and it is notorious that this is due very largely toprudent control.And statistics, showing that the numbers of marriagesand births in various countries vary with the cost of the prime neces-saries of life and with the prosperity of trade and agriculture, prove thatsuch control plays its part in most of the civilised countries.The parental instinct is the foundation of the family, and, with fewexceptions, all who have given serious attention to the question are agreedthat the stability of the family is the prime condition of a healthy state ofsociety and of the stability of every community.110 Although a contraryopinion has been maintained by certain writers, it is in the highest de-gree probable that the family was the earliest form of human society.111We have no certain record of any tribe or community of human beingsin which the family in one form or another does not exist.It is reducedperhaps to its lowest terms among some of the negrito peoples, wherethe co-operation of the father with the mother in the care of the off-spring which is the essential feature of the family continues onlyuntil the child is weaned and can walk.112It is probable that these two instincts in conjunction, the reproduc-tive and the parental instincts, directly impel human beings to a greatersum of activity, effort, and toil, than all the other motives of humanaction taken together.The parental instinct especially impels to actions that involve self-sacrifice, in the forms of suppression of the narrower egoistic tenden-cies and of heavy and unremitting toil on behalf of the offspring.Sincethese sacrifices and exertions on behalf of the children are a necessarycondition of the continued existence and the flourishing of any society,whether small or large, we find that among all peoples, save the verylowest in the scale of culture, the institution of marriage and the dutiesof parenthood are surrounded by the most solemn social sanctions, whichare embodied in traditional public opinion and in custom, in formal An Introduction to Social Psychology/187laws, and in the rites and doctrines of religion.These sanctions are inthe main the more solemnly and rigidly maintained by any society, thehigher the degree of civilisation attained by it and the freer and morenearly universal the play of the intellectual faculties among the mem-bers of that society.This correlation is accounted for by the followingconsiderations.The use of reason and intelligent foresight modifies pro-foundly the operation of all the instincts, and is especially apt to modifyand work against the play of the reproductive and parental instincts.Among the higher animals these instincts suffice to secure the perpetu-ation of the species by their blind workings.And we may suppose thatthe same was true of primitive human societies.113 But, with the in-crease of the power and of the habit of regulating instinctive action byintelligent foresight, the egoistic impulses must have tended to suppressthe working of the parental instinct; hence the need for the support ofthe instinct by strong social sanctions; hence also the almost universaldistribution of such sanctions.For those societies in which no such sanc-tions became organised must have died out; while only those in which,as intelligence became more powerful, these sanctions became moreformidable have in the long-run survived and reached any considerablelevel of civilisation.There has been, we may say, a never-ceasing racebetween the development of individual intelligence and the increasingpower of these social sanctions; and wherever the former has got aheadof the latter, there social disaster and destruction have ensued.At the present time many savage tribes and barbarous communitiesare illustrating these principles; they are rapidly dying out, owing to thefailure of the social sanctions to give sufficient support to the parentalinstinct against developing intelligence.It is largely for this reason thatcontact with civilisation proves so fatal to so many savage peoples; forsuch contact stimulates their intelligence, while it breaks the power oftheir customs and social sanctions generally and fails to replace them byany equally efficient.114 A weakening of the social sanctions of the pa-rental and reproductive instincts by developing intelligence has played agreat part also in the destruction of some of the most brilliant and pow-erful societies of the past, notably those of ancient Greece and Rome.115Among peoples of the lower cultures the failure of the social sanc-tions to maintain the predominance of the reproductive and parentalinstincts over the egoistic tendencies supported by intelligence, showsitself mainly in the form of infanticide; in the highly civilised nations ittakes the forms of pre-natal infanticide, of great irregularity of the rela- 188/William McDougalltions between the sexes, of failure of respect for marriage, of aberra-tions of the reproductive instinct (which so readily arise wherever thesocial sanctions become weakened), and, lastly, of voluntary celibacyand restriction of the family.116Mr.Benjamin Kidd117 has argued that the prime social function ofany system of supernatural or religious sanctions is the regulation andthe support of the parental instinct against the effects of developingintelligence.This statement contains a large element of truth, though itis perhaps an overstatement of the case
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
